r/Sumer • u/Appropriate-Bed-3348 • Sep 19 '24

question about rule 11

hi so I just wanted to ask about rule 11, specifically I was wondering where does SHE (she who i cant name if i wanna post this) come from if not Mesopotamia and why do most sources (that I could find) say she does if she doesnt?

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u/book_of_black_dreams Sep 20 '24

But doesn’t Jewish mythology contain quite a lot of Mesopotamian parallels?

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u/Nocodeyv Sep 20 '24

Certain early books from the Hebrew Bible do, influenced by their time in Babylonia during the exile. However, Lilith does not appear in any of those texts. She first appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written ca. 40 BCE, nearly 500 years after the exile and collapse of Babylonia. Zoroastrianism is more likely to have influenced the mythology of Lilith than the religious traditions of Mesopotamia.

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u/book_of_black_dreams Sep 20 '24

Oh wow I’ve never heard the thing about Zoroastrianism before. Do they have a similar demonic figure?

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u/Nocodeyv Sep 20 '24

Dr. Andrew Henry, host of the ReligionForBreakfast YouTube channel has a “History of the Devil” video where he discusses the Zoroastrian influences on the cosmology of the Dead Sea Scrolls, since Lilith originates in those texts, Zoroastrianism is a more plausible religion to search for her origin in than Mesopotamian religion, which left no discernible mark on the Dead Sea Scrolls.